Arrival of Europeans & British Expansion

Why would sailors from a small country on the Atlantic edge of Europe risk their lives to reach India? The answer is one word: spices. Pepper, cloves and cinnamon kept meat from spoiling and made European food bearable, and they sold for the price of gold. For centuries the spice trade went through Arab, Venetian and Ottoman hands. When the Ottoman Turks captured Constantinople in 1453, the old land routes became costly and risky, and Europe began to search for a direct sea route to India.

Europeans came for trade, but three things helped them: the compass and better ships, the Renaissance spirit of exploration, and the weakness of Indian coastal powers at sea. No Indian ruler of that time had a strong navy, so ships with cannon could control the sea lanes. This is also why the first foreigners to rule India's coast were seamen, not soldiers.

The Portuguese were first to come and last to leave. Vasco da Gama landed near Calicut in May 1498, guided across the Arabian Sea by a Gujarati pilot (named Abdul Majid in school books), and was received by the Zamorin, the Hindu ruler of Calicut. He returned with a cargo that paid for the whole voyage many times over. In 1500 Cabral followed and set up a trading post at Calicut and then Cochin, and Da Gama's second visit was in 1502. The first Portuguese fort in India, Fort Manuel, was built at Cochin in 1503, and Cochin remained their early capital.

The Portuguese ran a 'Cartaz' system: every Indian or Arab ship in the western Indian Ocean had to buy a naval pass or risk being sunk. Their rule was also religiously harsh, with the Inquisition set up in Goa in 1560, but they left real marks: the first printing press in India (Goa, 1556), Jesuit missions (St Francis Xavier came in 1542), and new crops such as tobacco, potato, chilli, maize, pineapple, papaya and cashew. Their power faded when the Dutch and English took over the sea trade, and the Marathas took Bassein in 1739. Even so, Goa, Daman and Diu stayed Portuguese until December 1961.

The Dutch came next. The United East India Company (VOC, 1602) cared most about the spice islands of Indonesia, so in India it built trading posts only to buy cloth and indigo for that trade. Its early factories were at Masulipatnam (1605), Petapuli/Nizampatnam (1606) and Pulicat (1610, Fort Geldria), and later at Surat, Chinsura (Bengal), Cochin, Nagapattinam and Kasimbazar. In 1663 the Dutch helped the Raja of Cochin to push out the Portuguese. But the Dutch lost to the English: Travancore's Marthanda Varma defeated them at Colachel in 1741, and the English beat them at Bedara (1759). After the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824 they left India.

The Danes (Danish East India Company, 1616) were the smallest players. They set up Tranquebar (Tharangambadi, Tamil Nadu) in 1620 and Serampore (Bengal) in 1755. Serampore later became famous for the Baptist Mission press of Carey, Marshman and Ward. The Danes never tried to build an empire and finally sold their Indian settlements to the British in 1845.

The English were late starters. On 31 December 1600 Queen Elizabeth I gave a royal charter to a group of London merchants, the Governor and Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East Indies, with the sole right to trade in the East for 15 years (it was renewed again and again). Their first big task was to get a footing in the Mughal empire. Captain William Hawkins came to Jahangir's court in 1608, and the English factory at Surat was set up in 1613 after Captain Best beat the Portuguese at sea. In 1615 Sir Thomas Roe, ambassador of James I, won broad trading rights from Jahangir.

Once Surat was set, the English spread along both coasts. In the south they built a base at Masulipatnam (1611) and then at Madras, which Francis Day got on lease from a local chief (the Chandragiri ruler) in 1639; Fort St George (1640) became the Company's southern headquarters and the seat of Madras's first municipal body (1687). On the west coast Bombay, given by Portugal to Charles II as dowry for Catherine of Braganza, was passed to the Company in 1668; Gerald Aungier turned it into a rival to Surat. In the east the English reached Orissa (Balasore, 1633), Hugli (1651), and then Calcutta in 1690, where Job Charnock settled on the Hugli. Fort William (1700) grew around it, and the English bought the zamindari of Sutanuti, Kalikata and Govindpur in 1698.

The 1717 farman of Emperor Farrukhsiyar, obtained after the Surman embassy and the medical help of Surgeon William Hamilton, is called the 'Magna Carta' of the Company. For a fixed yearly payment (Rs 3,000) the Company could trade in Bengal without paying customs, and its permit (dastak) protected even goods of its servants. Indian traders paid duties; the Company did not. This unfair advantage, and its misuse, is the root of the quarrel that led to Plassey.

The French came last. Under Louis XIV, his minister Colbert formed the Compagnie des Indes Orientales in 1664. Unlike the English company, it was a state-run body, with the King supplying funds and officers. The first French factory was founded at Surat in 1668 (Francois Caron), then Masulipatnam in 1669. The real French base came in 1674, when Francois Martin founded Pondicherry on land obtained from the Bijapur governor (Sher Khan Lodi). Chandernagore in Bengal followed (1690-92), and later Mahe (Malabar, 1725), Yanam (1731) and Karaikal (1739). Dupleix, governor from 1742, dreamed of an empire.

By the 1740s the English and French were not only trade rivals but also enemies in Europe (the War of the Austrian Succession, then the Seven Years' War), and Dupleix saw that Indian politics was weak enough to be used. The Nizam's Hyderabad and the Nawab of the Carnatic were both in succession disputes, and the two companies took opposite sides with trained sepoy armies. The result is called the three Carnatic Wars (1746-63), fought on the Coromandel coast near Madras, Pondicherry and Arcot.

Why did the French lose? Mainly because of sea power: the English navy could bring troops and stop French reinforcements. Next, the English had three strong bases (Calcutta, Madras, Bombay), and Bengal's wealth after Plassey paid for the southern war. The French company depended on a king who cared more about Europe, Dupleix was recalled, and French leaders (Dupleix and La Bourdonnais, Lally and Bussy) quarrelled among themselves.

The English had learned from the Carnatic that a few drilled soldiers plus a divided court could win a province. The richest province of India was Bengal, with its textile hubs, saltpetre, silk and a river network that made trade easy. When the capable Alivardi Khan died in 1756, his grandson Siraj-ud-Daulah became Nawab, young and surrounded by rivals. He asked the English to stop fortifying Calcutta, to stop misusing the dastak, and to stop sheltering one of his enemies. They refused. In June 1756 he captured Fort William at Calcutta, and the night that followed became famous as the 'Black Hole' tragedy (Holwell claimed 146 prisoners in a tiny room, 123 died; modern historians doubt the numbers).

Siraj's court was full of plotters. His commander Mir Jafar, the banker Jagat Seth, the officer Rai Durlabh, the merchant Omichand and others joined a conspiracy with Robert Clive. Clive first retook Calcutta (January 1757) and captured the French town of Chandernagore (March 1757). On 23 June 1757, on the field of Plassey near the Bhagirathi, Siraj's army of tens of thousands faced Clive's roughly three thousand men. A few loyal officers like Mir Madan fought hard, but Mir Jafar and Rai Durlabh held their troops back. The battle lasted hardly a day. Siraj fled and was killed soon after, and Mir Jafar became Nawab, paying huge sums to the Company and giving it the zamindari of the 24 Parganas.

Plassey was a small battle but a huge turning point because it was won by treachery plus money, not by arms. The Company made the new Nawab its puppet, collected 'presents' from him, took Bengal's revenue and used Bengal's wealth to fund its wars elsewhere (including the Carnatic). The move was from trader to kingmaker. Buxar then made the Company the real ruler.

Mir Jafar soon failed to satisfy the Company's greed, and in 1760 the English replaced him with his son-in-law Mir Qasim, who gave the Company the districts of Burdwan, Midnapore and Chittagong. Mir Qasim proved too able: he moved his capital to Monghyr, modernised his army and, to protect Indian traders from unfair competition, abolished all internal duties, which put the English at par with Indians. The English were furious. After defeats at Katwa, Giria and Udhua Nala (1763), Mir Qasim fled to Awadh and joined Shuja-ud-Daulah (Nawab of Awadh) and the fallen Mughal emperor Shah Alam II.

On 22 October 1764 the three allies were defeated at Buxar (Bihar) by Major Hector Munro. This was the real conquest of north India's gateway, because it broke the combined power of the Nawab of Awadh and the Mughal emperor. Clive, returning as Governor, concluded two settlements in August 1765 (the Treaty of Allahabad). With Shuja he made peace, taking a war indemnity of Rs 50 lakh and giving back most of Awadh. From Shah Alam II he obtained the Diwani (right to collect revenue) of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa, in return for an annual payment of Rs 26 lakh and the districts of Allahabad and Kora for the emperor.

This arrangement, the Dual Government of Bengal (1765-72), was Clive's invention. The Company had the money and the army, the Nawab had the blame. Revenue was squeezed harder, trade and agriculture suffered, and in 1769-70 a terrible famine killed about one-third of Bengal's people. Warren Hastings ended the system in 1772, took the revenue collection into Company hands, and shifted the treasury from Murshidabad to Calcutta. After a bitter later life, Clive died in 1774, by his own hand.

After Buxar the Company was a power in the east, but the Marathas, Mysore, the Sikhs and the Nizam still blocked the rest of India. The conquest was slow, done mostly by wars one by one, with the British picking off enemies separately. Look at it as a map in four directions: Mysore in the south, the Marathas in the west and centre, the Sikhs in the north-west, and a ring of border wars (Nepal, Sindh, Burma, Afghanistan).

Mysore rose under Hyder Ali (a soldier who seized power from the Wodeyar kings around 1761). He built an arsenal at Dindigul with French help and became the one Indian ruler with a drilled, modern army. His son Tipu Sultan carried on, and the Company saw both as dangerous because they traded with the French, kept good relations with France, and controlled the rich pepper coast of Malabar. Four wars were fought between 1767 and 1799.

Tipu was ahead of his time: he started a navy, used rockets in war, built state factories, encouraged silk and trade, and sent embassies to Turkey, France and Arabia. The story that he planted a 'Tree of Liberty' and joined the Jacobin Club of Seringapatam shows how close he was to French ideas. That is exactly why the British feared him, and why the French link is a favourite exam point.

The Marathas were the strongest Indian power in the 1760s, but they had never recovered fully from the defeat at Panipat (1761) and now suffered from bitter quarrels in the Peshwa's house. The British used these quarrels in three wars.

The Sikh kingdom was the last big Indian state. Maharaja Ranjit Singh (ruler of Lahore from 1799, crowned 1801) kept it strong, with a modern Khalsa army trained by European officers, but the Treaty of Amritsar (1809) with Charles Metcalfe fixed the Sutlej as the limit of his expansion. After his death in 1839, court intrigues, weak successors and a proud army that obeyed no one created chaos. The Sikh army crossed the Sutlej in December 1845.

Wars were only half the story. The British also built an empire by policies that let them control Indian states without always fighting them. Each Governor-General left his own signature, so the cleanest way to learn is by seeing who did what.

Warren Hastings' Ring-Fence Policy. The word 'ring-fence' means building a fence around your property. Hastings wanted the Company's land in Bengal to be surrounded by friendly buffer states, so that enemies like the Marathas and the Afghans would hit the buffer first. The main buffer was Awadh. Hastings trained Awadh's army, lent Company troops to the Nawab, and signed the Treaty of Benares (1773). It was a defensive idea: protect what you have, avoid extra territory.

Non-intervention. Pitt's India Act (1784) said that wars of conquest and expansion were 'repugnant to the wish, honour and policy of the nation'. Cornwallis and Sir John Shore therefore kept out of Indian quarrels, but the policy did not last: Wellesley soon threw it aside.

The Subsidiary Alliance was a system, first tried by Dupleix and perfected by Lord Wellesley, by which an Indian ruler was given British 'protection' in exchange for his independence. In practice the ruler became a pensioner in his own kingdom. It was a way of conquering without a war.

The Doctrine of Lapse was Lord Dalhousie's policy (1848-56). Hindu custom allowed a ruler without a natural son to adopt an heir. Dalhousie said that in a state under British protection (a dependent state), adoption needed the paramount power's permission, and where permission was refused the state 'lapsed' to the Company. The rule was not applied to sovereign states, and Dalhousie did not allow even an adopted son to inherit the title or pension. The Court of Directors itself had approved the idea, but the 'natural heir' rule turned a religious custom into a political trap.

Dalhousie also annexed Awadh in 1856, not by Lapse but on the charge of misgovernment. Nawab Wajid Ali Shah was sent to Calcutta (Metiabruz). Nobles, soldiers and peasants of Awadh felt betrayed, and their anger exploded in 1857. Dalhousie also took away the titles of the Nawab of the Carnatic and the Raja of Tanjore, and refused to continue the pension of Nana Saheb, the adopted son of Baji Rao II. The Berar districts were taken from the Nizam in 1853 to pay for the Hyderabad Contingent.

After Buxar the Company's biggest question was money: how do we collect revenue from the land, which gave most of India's income? Before the British, a zamindar was mainly a collector who kept a share and passed on the rest, and the land belonged to the cultivator who tilled it. The Company needed a fixed, predictable income to pay for armies and the 'investment' (goods bought for export), and it also wanted a loyal class of supporters. After years of experiments (five-year and yearly auctions under Warren Hastings, a ten-year settlement in 1789) it finally chose three systems in three regions.

The Permanent Settlement (1793). Introduced by Lord Cornwallis, it was applied in Bengal, Bihar and Orissa (later also in the Varanasi region and northern Madras). It made the zamindar the legal owner of the land and fixed the revenue he had to pay for ever: about 10/11 went to the government and 1/11 stayed with the zamindar. The pay-day was fixed by the 'Sunset Law': if the revenue was not paid before sunset on the due day, the estate could be auctioned. The cultivators, who had earlier held rights as occupants, were reduced to tenants who could be thrown out.

The idea was neat on paper: a fixed demand lets landlords invest in better farming, and the Company is guaranteed money. In practice the landlords spent little on land and a lot on rents. Because the amount was fixed for ever, the Company could not share in later rise in income as prices and cultivation grew; because the zamindar could raise rents, the cultivator bore the burden. Many old zamindars also lost estates under the Sunset Law, and absentee landlords and sub-letting spread.

The Ryotwari System. Started by Alexander Read in the Baramahal region (1792) and developed by Thomas Munro, it was introduced in the Madras Presidency (1820) and then in Bombay (1825), also in Assam and parts of Coorg. Here the government settled the revenue directly with the ryot (cultivator), who was recognised as the owner as long as he paid. Land was measured and assessed afresh, usually every 20-30 years, and the demand was very high, often one-third to one-half of the produce. Because the rate could be raised each time, a bad harvest forced peasants into the hands of moneylenders.

The Mahalwari System. Devised by Holt Mackenzie (1822, Regulation VII) and developed by Robert Merttins Bird, it was applied in the North-Western Provinces (Agra and Oudh region), parts of Central India and Punjab. The unit was the mahal, a village or group of villages. The revenue was assessed on the whole village community, and the village headmen (lambardars) collected it from the co-sharers and paid the government. The settlement was revised, usually every 30 years, and each revision raised the burden on the whole village together.

Why did the British stay on after conquest? Because India paid for them. Before 1757 the Company brought silver to India to buy goods; after Plassey it bought goods with India's own revenue, and sent them to England. That single change is the root of the economic story of colonial India: the country's wealth began to flow outward, its crafts decayed, its farmers were pushed towards crops for export, and the new railways and canals mainly served the empire's needs.

The Drain of Wealth. Indian wealth was sent to Britain without any return: salaries and pensions of British officials, interest on India's public debt, 'Home Charges' (the cost of the India Office in London), the cost of the army and wars outside India (such as Afghanistan and Burma), and profits of British merchants and bankers. Dadabhai Naoroji first put it in numbers in his paper England's Debt to India (1867) and in Poverty and Un-British Rule in India (1901), where he called it the 'drain theory'. R. C. Dutt in The Economic History of India (1901-03) and moderates like M. G. Ranade, G. Subramania Iyer and G. K. Gokhale used it to show that poverty was man-made.

De-industrialisation. India was a famous exporter of cloth (Dhaka muslin, Murshidabad silk, Surat calico). After the Industrial Revolution in Britain, the story reversed. Britain put very high duties on Indian cloth while Indian ports took British machine-made cloth almost duty-free. The Company's monopoly ended with the Charter Act of 1813 (except for tea and the China trade), and after the Charter Act of 1833 it stopped trading altogether. Weavers, spinners and metal-workers lost their markets, towns like Dhaka and Murshidabad shrank, and the artisans went back to farming, so more of the people depended on land, which is why historians speak of the 'ruralisation of India'.

Commercialisation of agriculture. Peasants were pushed to grow cash crops for export: indigo (Bengal, later Bihar), cotton (Deccan, boom during the American Civil War), jute, opium (Bihar and Malwa, sold to China), tea (Assam, plantations from the 1830s) and sugarcane. The profits went to traders, moneylenders and planters, and not to the farmers. With land-revenue to pay in cash, a failed crop meant borrowing, and moneylenders took over land. Food-grain shortages also grew, and severe famines followed: Bengal (1770), then 1876-78, 1896-97 and 1899-1900, and the Great Bengal Famine of 1943.

Railways and communication. The first passenger train in India ran from Bombay (Bori Bunder) to Thane on 16 April 1853, over about 34 km, under Lord Dalhousie. The next lines were Howrah-Hugli (1854) and Madras (Royapuram)-Arcot (1856). British companies built lines under a guarantee system: the government gave land free and promised a 5 per cent return, so the risk was on Indian taxpayers. The main purpose was military movement, taking raw materials to ports and spreading British goods into the interior, though they also helped national unity. Dalhousie also introduced the telegraph (1851-52, O'Shaughnessy) and the uniform postal system (1854, half-anna letter), and started the Ganga Canal (1854).

A single test tells you whether a British measure was meant to help India or to help Britain: ask who gained the profit and who bore the risk. Railways: British companies got a guaranteed profit, Indians bore the risk. Cash crops: planters and traders got the profit, farmers bore the risk. Land revenue: the state got a fixed income, farmers bore the risk of bad harvests. That is the logic behind the nationalist verdict of 'economic exploitation'.